Democratic lawmaker calls for DOJ investigation of entire Trump administration

A New Jersey Democrat is calling for the Justice Department to investigate the entire Trump administration upon President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration in January.

In a fiery statement Tuesday, Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.) called for President Trump and other top members of his administration to be “tried for their crimes against our nation and Constitution,” adding that the president himself had engaged in “treason.”

“[The president] has attacked our elections and sought to throttle democracy,” Pascrell said. “He was rightly impeached by the House of Representatives. He has engaged in treachery, in treason. He has all but given up on governing and protecting our nation and if he had a shred of dignity he would resign today.”

“Failure to hold financial and political wrongdoing accountable in the past has invited greater malfeasance by bad actors. A repeat of those failures in 2021 further emboldens criminality by our national leaders and continues America down the path of lawlessness and authoritarianism. There must be accountability,” he continued.

Pascrell’s statement was one of the strongest in favor of Democratic-led investigations into former members of Trump administration upon Biden’s assumption of the presidency. Democrats have alleged for years that top members of Trump’s inner circle, as well as the president himself, have used their positions in the administration for their own personal gain while committing abuses of power.

Trump himself is the subject of numerous allegations of violations of the Emoluments Clause regarding his personal businesses, at which he has stayed numerous times during his presidency while also seeing some, particularly his Washington, D.C. hotel, frequented by GOP-leaning groups.

Scott Pruitt, Trump’s former Environmental Protection Agency administrator, also resigned under a cloud of ethics scandals in 2018.